David Sparenberg
TANGO TREE
On a late December afternoon, with outer world somber and withdrawn, one conceives that
the only way to give definition to a poem—convinced that the utterance moans piteously if beautiful
or cries out in tortured protest over time and parting from one feeling in afterward of flight and drowning—that
the only way open to flesh and wound of heartache is to break the forest into trees and the worded lines into short
suspended pieces—like
plucking feathers patiently from wings of blackbirds or pulling petals from the soft self-holding of a sacrificial
scarlet flower.
On a late December afternoon, the sun possessed by leaden darkness and landscape quiet under chilly shadows, one
conceives that
the only way to speak of life at all is to begin backward with a Tango Tree in autumn when
leaf colors are catching fire because of coldness and the winds bring steadily a lovely torment between earth
and emptiness: winter’s promise. On
one – hand - there
is love the messiah and on the other death the fated. Only both hands are forever eager to subdue in union—only
now they are prayer, now they are wrestling. Ah—and…
the only
way to
speak of
this is
teardrops
mouth
wetting
one by
one or
panting
short of
breath and
deep
in
transport
passion
pouring
poem burns
water
into kisses
“a
deep (oh—oh))
palpitation of the spirit”*
David Sparenberg
30 December 2011
*Antonino Machado

Bob Ezergailis
251010A
The way it feels,
to be tossed
onto a heap
of decomposing corpses,
unable to move,
or to utter a sound,
but still alive.
No one hears
anything you say,
and every effort
to break free
has you sinking
deeper and deeper
into a sea of dead flesh.
The whisperings
of all of your enemies,
crawl along the surfaces
of your skin,
insects entering your orifices
and as you try to spit them out,
they suffocate with little sounds.
You crawl towards morning,
pushing aside blankets of earth,
splitting open the darkness,
watching for signs of life
as the faces melt away,
candle wax melting in the flames
of your eyes.
251010B
Ripping the shutters
from your eyes,
to let the blinding light enter.
Battering hard questions
against the walls of the skull,
until it throbs painfully,
and something breaks down
spilling the grey porridge
from your bowl
as if any of your thoughts
ever had any significance.
They litter the floor,
in between spatters of blood,
a vomit of ideals,
that you coughed up
leaving nothing recognizable
other than boot prints
seeking something to kick at,
providing the punishment
for guessing
when there are no answers
to memorize and repeat.
It was always a would be lover
who led you into the trap,
denying you any real comfort
for your loneliness,
always taking
more than you could ever give,
then drinking your blood
and swallowing the last
of your wafer thin flesh
while putting out the candles
you had so carefully lit.
The sleepless night
renews its relentless attack,
gouging at the hollow places
where you once kept vigil,
giving out unwanted blessings,
to anyone who came along
with the slightest promise
of information,
leading to any worthwhile plan
for a quick escape
from mediocrity and pastimes.
It was too late,
immediately following
it was too early.
They always capture one
where there is no time,
somewhere in between
pulling everything down,
that tries to rise up,
breaking anything
that bravely refuses
to submit to failure.
Leaves a muffled scream
to be heard for centuries,
in between the deafening sounds
of endless armies of marching feet,
ceaseless volleys of guns,
leaving nothing much of anything
for anyone to hide behind,
everything having fallen
between this and the other side
of that no man’s land
of endless deceptions and lies.
011110A
Wings of demons fluttering
among gold leaf
Waving fingers of wind
and the bared limbs of trees.
Battered faded flags,
and torn red pennants.
The ground growing cold,
strewn with the fallen.
Winter will send angels
to cover them with white wings.
031110A
Waiting for answers,
haunted by the one fact
that anyone can become dead bones
while waiting for answers.
The desire to keep digging
for answers
makes an empty hole
large enough
to bury a man.
031110B
I looked for you everywhere,
never knowing who you were.
I left too early, I came too late.
There were no introductions,
and there was no letter in the mail.
Everything I knew had failed.
I followed the rumors
that always took me further
but never brought me near.
I was told there was a great mystery,
but found only an ugly device
between the boredom and fiction.
I hate to look into mirrors,
afraid I might see what was spared
from being seen by your eyes.
I don’t know where the others have gone,
looking for something better,
knowing I have become much worse.
I meet all the lucky people,
who never have any luck to spare,
and none of them know you.
Seems it ends that way,
and the words are the ghosts
of the chance that never came.
031110C
When you were young
you believed
in what proved untrue.
When you were old
you failed to believe
in what proved true.
In between
there were exaggerated rumors
that something could be done.
031110D
If one looks for angels
to take them to heaven,
they look for a way to die.
You told me you were the angel,
I should hold in my arms,
but I knew it was a lie.
I would rather see the devil
somewhere in your eyes,
than be looking for a way to die.
I want to know you in that night
of never having dreamt
that we could go so far and high.
Len Kuntz
Lit
On Wednesday
I wrote you a poem.
It was honest and sweet and
would have made you smile.
I described how shy you were those first few talks.
I mentioned your eyes quite a bit,
the way their color shifts in the light,
shimmering when wet.
I even admitted how much I miss you
as well as some of the things I’d do
just to hear your voice,
smell your hair,
feel your skin.
But by the time I got to the last word
the paper combusted,
alarms when off,
and I sat there while sprinklers doused every stitch of this room.
I had a hard time explaining it to the firemen.
I had a hard time explaining it.
Alchemy
You are turning inside me,
coiling and unfurling
the way a fetus might
if it was wearing razors.
A few more weeks of this and I’ll have it mastered.
I’m only tin now,
but soon,
very soon,
I’ll make myself steel.
All of My Favorite Colors
Yellow ropes my neck.
Black beats me blue.
Green smothers with a pillow.
Brown flings broken bits of dirt inside my eyes.
White wants to cut me.
Orange is shooting acid.
Purple punches hard.
Gray has a slingshot.
And, red,
well, red has had enough and cuts my heart out with a butter knife.
Torch Song
She is trying to open me up,
rip off the hinges and
root around,
scrape through the dim ether that
inhabits who I am
or who she thinks I am.
We need more light to
do this proper.
We need kerosene and matches.
Yes, a good old fashioned torching.
Intuition
Beneath the couch cushions
I find your torn tickets
and a receipt for salted clams.
It doesn’t take much to
end blades whirling in the air,
walls ready to collect blood splatters.
Even your old cat
looks frightened.
Anthony Nannetti
The Riverhead
Brave Hasdrubal,
poised to awaken
from an elemental enervation
or death,
sees first the monkey bread of the baobab tree.
He conjures a broadbill
bending to the spray
where pangolins bray to hear themselves above the current
and emerges at the riverhead,
neither squama nor flesh,
without legions to command.
Christopher Barnes
SEA GRAVE
Dragging a gulp - lampblack;
no beacon bobs to snuffed-out eyes.
THE STATE FACTION
In a deadlocked train de luxe
I crooked clear of The Specialist.
I wouldn't absorb
his crushed despair.
He knew we were floored
at the preambling boom
of hobnails.
"Visa," I breathed, "set off, scutter!"
I tacked his something-or-nothing elbows,
hinged at the vistaed door.
Then the station shattered,
lock, stock and barrel.
A backdoor crash-pop-slam -
eight sleeping compartments
dovetailing us. A rattling crackle.
"Guess who's behind this?"
"A Lord of Creation
in the call centre
has pressed out a maxim
pretending to be The Acolytes of Terror."
THE ASSASSIN
She's cryptoanylitic, neck bent
over ruffled-silk animal heat,
(rip-cord, hook, eye, combination lock,
knotty bliss)
flip-flops the awning from their bed
into his parachute.
In a twinkling death-deal
he quicksilvers to a splatter.
She spirals triumphantly,
a golden-dyed head,
purrs an obsolete lyric
remindful of love,
warps and guides
a vanishing trick
into curly clouds.
THE PROTECTOR HERO OF COMICS
A bleeding-hearted galactic circle
orgasms
a brass-backboned fetishist
the fall-out
to shelter us all.
*
Grasper of muscle brochures
(he has impertinence for bobby soxers)
and pulp serials,
he's nylon-crotched, flashier than gold.
Colourably he'll riddle
the foe (of his dollar-dyed oasis)
with an inexplicable catch-fire liquid
or skim an atomiser torpedo
to neutri-blast shaking fists
in a fizzle of Sure For Men.
Clap-clap-clap-clap and magnifications
for the he-hero
in freedom-web tights.
THE BELL METAL CAGE MUTANT
Prime-time dazzle sun
chars me where I opt.
My torso invokes dare-devilish jailbird garb.
No ballistic'll have over 50% longshot
at slugging me.
I bask in surveillance
a soft spot for slant wind
on firing lines,
vertebral bars.
Not a treecreeper doodle-dooing,
this swing doesn't woo me.
Whispered mentions and inaccessibility are mine.
THE 'LET US' MASS
Pastor
This is the propagation alterpiece, newfangled.
Inhale a canticle exalting our Lord.
Between acts stake out steps
backwards to the tabernacle.
A Geneisis-delivered lad,
HIS endowment to us induces the faithful -
rumba of the impotent nativity
shadowed by the infertile chorale.
Congregation
Bygone we were quids in,
no Easy Street interminable.
Eyes on the inner we sit tight.
Our opening's a spare day -
an other-worldly cell
levitated in prayer-heated miasma.
Gary J. Shipley
THIS HORSE-DRAWN RIBCAGE
Their theology turned into an operating room
With nimble interns suffering disorders of blood
And fingernails releasing
The tendon of your religious clubfoot.
This is a history of leeched contaminations
Mass-produced in the lubricants of sleep.
absorbed in our room full of
our heads shot up with Oslo gloom
our interiors transformed into sweat and hair.
Your face was always a banal slogan of permanence.
I can see the lightbulb wear your death like a burka.
Your corpse is the colour to be seen in.
The air is inflatable and so
We buried all our children (deep)
in the future we didn’t want.
There are some that blink inside the rooms they made blinking
And this is their way of blurring the shapes they do not trust.
The eggs we sat on hatched such drowsy machines
So full up with dough and fatigue
They reminded us of the days when reality was a science.
So I became methodical with the lacquer on your hair
The black eyes ashtrays
The mouth slaughtered lipstick
The voice a mongrel incantation
And me an amateur gynaecologist wrist-deep in sadistic rumours.
The faces were insects
The newspapers were anti-freeze
The clouds were holes
The traffic was mould
The wife was flies
The street was dawn
The gore was smiling
ANTISEPTIC GROPING
This garnish of rattlesnakes and child porn just don’t fizz like it used to.
And so instead I watch horses gallop in the white rot of the sea, their gimped mouths boiling spores,
and listen to my bacterial solipsism yapping after distant uniforms of smoke.
All my proto-perspectives peddle in murder and leave their murky souvenirs like apologetic fizzlings of
cramp in formulaic displays for others to find and untangle into me.
A eunuch looks over his priapic merchandise
And sees only the geometry of an exorcism
Repeated over into his embalmed intimates.
And then back to what I know: the protocols of women tilted back and fucked in the throat, their white
faces bleeding rendezvous of black floodwater.
EMBRYO SLAB
Stink of derelict hungers
Bleached inside my niggles
Develops me an institutional swagger.
They told us we were corruptions of 3-D
Pulling confessions from me
– Questions.
Can death be anything but the presence or absence of light?
Are my imperfections chic enough to poison your womb?
And what is the life expectancy of this continual act of heroism?
The holes were our versions of transit,
The growling cut-lines piecing us together
In the sartorial fungus of matrimony and all
Our babies tiny catastrophes of oxygen.
INVERTED ASPHYXIATION
There’s always someone wanting a manicure, here now for this orphaned metal, and her contents exceeding
the span of my gloved hands. Binging on the relics of her glamour, sexualised with screwdrivers, my immune
system’s a claw of dismantled syntax. It’s only a year since the morning turned her to soot and rustled
mummified banquets from her gawping mouth, and if I look away I’ll never look back, so I’ll just keep
breathing out till the nails through her hands are dry.
Michael D. Brown
Swan Lake
Hunting often haunting,
You seek what you do not know
-Intuition the only sure voice…
You hunt, others hunt you: you seek
You are sought. Night unveils what the day
Conceals: we are seldom what we appear to be…
Is the swan more beautiful than the woman,
Or the woman more beautiful than the swan?
Some curses, a blessing: some blessings, a curse.
White swan by day, the night transforms every woman
discarding the mask every swan wears:
the white feathers, angel wings: - Concentric circles in the water,
-halos from the reflection, of the lovers’ swan lake.
Taking a constitutional
The rush of bees forming a swarm
Hum in chorus, the arrangement
close to classical music, a symphony
I cannot identify: I move slowly without
Disturbing leaves liberating their stems from
the territorial nature of trees: I belong here
nothing in nature interferes with my claim:
animals welcome me to the community as a committee,
as a neighborhood watch: -you can never be too careful
with people…
911
For the victims and their families
The screams are not silent
In the terror of memories past;
But it is never only the past,
There are days that take on life in its own infamy
Reports come to make news undesirable forever.
Death separates itself from life
As if they never were related, as a beginning,
As an end:
Making sense of it all escapes every explanation
That the heart accepts as rational.
Every new day, in the wake of this day, laments,
In hope…
Michael Ceraolo
Shakespearean Baseball Sonnet #12
When I do see the clock that tells the time
I give thanks that the game can last all night,
That the clock does not dictate its prime
When a game itself is tighter than tight.
Extra innings march along one by one,
When oh when will this game ever be won?
Both are playing for the game-winning score:
Every pitch fraught with dramatic tension,
Special strategies to plate one run more,
Those left of the crowd paying attention
And doing little things to keep from sleep
As our team tries hard to avoid the sweep.
But the game is lost: failings on defense;
I and the rest of the crowd beat it hence.
Shakespearean Baseball Sonnet #32
If I survive the season's closing day
When that churl Death the fields with dust shall cover,
And shalt by fortune once more re-survey
These poor rude lines of a baseball lover,
Maybe they will have the bettering of time
And not be exceeded by every pen,
And not have the forcing of any rhyme,
And I'll be among the happier men.
But if the poems do not improve with age,
That will not keep me from the game's next page,
For all the joy that to me it has brought,
All the times it has stimulated thought;
Even though some poets better may prove
That won't change a thing of the game I love.
Shakespearean Baseball Sonnet #38
How can my Muse want subject to invent,
While the game lives and pours into my verse
Its own sweet argument, too excellent
For vulgar cable networks to rehearse?
I give thanks to the game if aught in me
Worthy perusal stands in the game's sight;
For who's so dumb that can't write about thee
When all of the game gives invention light?
Be thou the tenth Muse, ten times more in worth
Than those old nine which rhymers invocate;
Not least among many things bringing forth
Eternal numbers to outlive long date.
If my slight Muse do please these curious days,
The pain's mine, but the game's shall be the praise.
Shakespearean Baseball Sonnet #41
Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits
That are sanctioned within the game itself;
One, the stolen base, speed full well befits,
A piece from the pitcher's and catcher's self.
But not speed alone allows it to be won:
Beauteous is the art that is assailed
When failed at by any mother's son
Or daughter, when the defense has prevailed.
But ah! when the attempt is a success,
Experience, and/or the speed of youth
Slides safely away from the tag's access,
A thing of beauty that is also truth.
A steal's beauty is tempting to thee:
The game's legitimate larceny.
Shakespearean Baseball Sonnet #55
Not marble nor the gilded monuments
Of stars shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmirched with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And destroy all stadiums' masonry,
It will still be one of the world's concerns,
The living record of your memory.
Against all the other activity
Stands the game; your praise shall find every room,
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
Till the judgement that one day will arise,
You live on, and dwell in your lovers' eyes.
Shakespearean Baseball Sonnet #109
O, never say that I was false of heart,
Though absence seemed my flame to qualify,
And many a night I did so depart
From the game's sight; of that I cannot lie.
But I always, as if pre-arranged,
Return to the game again and again,
In time before my sanity's exchanged,
Despite the sight of its promoters' stain.
Hundreds of years the game's nature has reigned,
Seemingly in spite of its ruling brood,
With good qualities that cannot be feigned,
With a certain something for every mood.
for no sport in the universe I call
My favorite, save this game of baseball.

Boghos Artinian
Apparel
The miter, the turban, the cap and the gown
Are not the implements of a circus clown;
They are the universal passports
To all earthly hurdles and to all earthly ports!
As in histocompatibility microscopic
They are for sociocompatibility macroscopic;
To antigens that coat the membranes of a cell
Headgear and gowns are the perfect parallel !

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